I was in Detroit for New Year’s Eve sometime in the recent past, and ended up partying at a place called North End Studios. I was taking lots of stupid party photos and snapped a photo of a friend who had nestled up to another girl I didn’t know. This mystery woman was clutching a tallboy of Coors, not unusual, but she also wore purple-painted eyebrows, a high-collared ivory fur coat, and a black beanie with skulls on it. I posted it on Instagram and instantly accumulated a hefty number of likes.
I came to find out later people weren’t just into her style, they were into the fact that she’s Molly Soda, the wildly popular digi-artist whose show Same opens tonight, Thursday, August 13 at Bushwick’s Stream Gallery.
The instant click appeal of Molly Soda, the personality, has been proven again and again by the number of views, likes, and re-blogs of her half-charming, half-cringe-worthy YouTube videos (there are hundreds of them), Tumblr posts, and social media presence. But Molly Soda, the artist, is a little more complex.
Her work is a mix of internet low-brow; the raw-as-hell, unapologetic sexuality of fourth wave feminism; and a Larry Clark-like fascination with that particular mix of seediness and the banal, sometimes Middle American underbelly, as it plays out in the digital sphere. I mean c’mon, when I asked Molly if her work at Same (glitchy, ghostly nude-ish images of herself printed on two blankets) was screen-printed, she answered matter-of-factly: “Actually, I got them from Walmart.com. They’re fleece blankets.”
Her work nails the fine art of the overshare. Most of her YouTube videos are shot in her messy bedroom while Molly is half-dressed, half in-bed. She’s unafraid to bluntly discuss her relationship status. And she has no problem calling out people who send her problematic (i.e. sexist, ignorant) messages. And this summer, Molly leaked her own nudes. Gasp! (But actually, these revealed that people still have hang-ups about seeing slightly erotic, non-pornographic women in the nude, even if it’s art.)
But Molly Soda’s work isn’t a one-sided contribution to internet infinite. Interactivity is an essential part of her work, which makes it true net art. Much like the internet itself, Soda’s work is anything but static, distant, untouchable. Because she posts stuff on YouTube, Instagram, Tumblr, Facebook, etc., it’s open season for fanboys and trolls alike. Part of the fun is the fascinating but sometimes twisted behavior Molly Soda’s work inspires in social media users, which betrays whether people “get it” or not (and it’s usually the latter). That conversation also influences her output.
Art work qualifies as “interesting”– a dumb word, sorry– if it’s polarizing. For as many instances of praise and attention as Molly Soda receives, there are also detractors. There’s definitely not much “Molly Soda is all right” being said.
One common criticism of her work (which is often confused for IRL Molly Soda) involves naysayers dismissing it as, essentially, “Myspace trash,” the words of one undoubtedly brilliant art critic who commented on a post about Molly’s new zine kiss kiss. The guy isn’t wrong, he’s actually dead on, though not in the way that he thinks he’s right.
And somehow, Molly Soda doesn’t seem to hate on Tumblr teens for not understanding post-modernism just yet, especially because that teen/tween way of engaging with the internet (or better yet, through the internet) is exactly what she’s grasping at.
To the critical eye — and to people who think about the internet and how it’s affected our thinking, our relationships, our social spheres, even the position of our neck — there’s a lot more going on here. And while, yeah, Molly Soda uses “Myspace bullshit” as her creative currency, she’s also picking it apart maybe better than anyone else out there right now.
I caught up with Molly Soda yesterday at Stream Gallery where, along with some friends and collaborators, she was busy hanging work for Same, a show she curated with a specific internet phenomenon in mind.
I went to school for photography at NYU. I would post photos online, but I sort of kept my internet self and my art self separate. I realized I was really unhappy doing that and that I didn’t want to be an artist in the way that I thought I wanted to be an artist, where I thought I’m supposed to make prints and hang them in galleries and that’s all I’m supposed to do. Or I’m supposed to work for magazines, like whatever. And I was like, I don’t even wanna take photos.
So I sort of decided that I wanted to work in different mediums. So I got really into web design, I got really into video art. And then I kind of just started putting my work out there and started going by Molly Soda, in 2009 when I started my Tumblr. That’s when it became more of an art practice and, “Oh, I blog about my life but I also make art in real life.” So it became more of one thing. And it’s been a steady evolution up until this point.
I sort of had this idea of doing the “same” theme, or playing on the “me as hell”— that sort of thing, that language on the internet— and doing a show that revolved around that. But for a while I had a hard time articulating it, I was like, “I wanna do pieces that mean ‘same’” or ‘I wanna reblog this’ or ‘this is me.’” I sort of didn’t know it I wanted to do pieces that I felt super connected to or pieces that directly commented on that, so it’s a bit of a mixture of both. So it’s me and four other artists.
I have a video piece by a girl named Sarah Cohen. It’s just a bunch of videos of her dancing in her room or like singing along to songs. I make a lot of videos like that. If you’ve looked at my YouTube channel, there are over 300 of me doing that exact thing.
So I was really drawn to her videos, because they really reminded me of mine, and I thought, we all have these videos of ourselves sitting on our computer. And I’d never get to see them in a gallery space and I think they’re really important. So I messaged her and said, “Just send me all of your videos. Send me whatever you want.” So I think there are five videos of her in the show.
And then when you put something in a gallery, you kind of glorify it in this way, which I don’t really thing is necessarily good, in some sense. Because I think the best work that I see is online, so I like putting the work that I see online in a gallery space just because it makes sense to me and I want everyone to see it.
I feel like you’re going to reach more people on the internet, but it’s nice to see things you recognize from the internet or that you would see online, in a physical space, because I don’t get the opportunity to do that very often.
But I also like finding new artists on the internet. All of these people in the show, I don’t know in real life. With the exception of Sarah [Cohen], who I met because I used a piece of hers in another show. Everyone who’s in the show is someone I’ve been able to connect to online, which is important.
I think I treat everyone pretty evenly and fairly. But I’m not going to sit here and argue with people because it’s a waste of my time. So like 90 percent of the messages I get on Tumblr I don’t respond to, even if they’re positive. Well, if they’re positive I’ll respond to them privately with a smiley face or something.
And that’s not really true. I like living in Detroit. I lived in New York. I lived in Chicago. And I grew up in the Midwest, so I like being in the Midwest. I personally felt really drawn to Detroit because of the community there. And it’s not so much that all of my friends are artists— actually my friends do all sorts of different things— but just that everyone’s so genuine and positive. Everyone’s really down to help out, which is something I don’t see in a lot of other cities. And there’s a lot less pretension and it’s way easier to meet people and feel comfortable with people right away, which is what drew me to there.
Also, I realized I really appreciate having space and I like having a house. And I like having space to make work at home, because I make most of my work at home. So it’s really important that my home life is comfortable, because that’s where I am most of the time.
That trend’s really peculiar to me, because I’ve had girls comment that on my stuff. And obviously, these girls I could never be their mother because I’m not that much older than them. But I think it’s kind of a new way to say, “I look up to you in this way.” I think it’s kind of nice, but also a little weird. So, I’m not sure.
I quit drinking in November, so I get a lot of question about that. Basically anything I’ve put out there, people see that I’ve been open about it and they don’t mind asking me questions about it. And I don’t mind answering.
But the downside is that I’m a lot more anxious, I can’t chill as hard or I don’t feel very chill, ever. Which is sort of negative, sometimes.
It’s easier in Detroit, I’ve found, to not drink. But in New York it’s fine as well. Detroit is a really big drinking town. I drank a lot when I first moved there. I think that had a lot to do with me wanting to go out and meet new people, so I was going out and drinking a lot to do so.
I’ve always wanted to do that and I finally got the opportunity to do it with this gallery. I’ve always thought about what I could have at my dream show and I think this is what I want it to be, so I’m really excited.